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Frederick Clarke Withers was born in Shepton Mallet, Somersetshire.[1] He had a brother, Robert Jewell Withers, who also became an architect.[2] He studied architecture in England for eight years. He came to the United States in 1851/52 at the invitation of the prominent American architect Andrew Jackson Downing. Withers and Downing later became family, as they married sisters: Emily Augusta and Caroline Elizabeth DeWindt, respectively. The sisters were great-grandchildren of President John Adams, and grandnieces of John Quincey Adams. Downing drowned that year, attempting to save his mother, following the explosion of the steamboat Henry Clay. Calvert Vaux, Downing's partner, then took Withers in as a partner, at Newburgh, New York.[3] Vaux included a design for a bookcase credited to Withers among those in his Villas and Cottages (New York, 1857), which records both designs of Downing and Vaux and Vaux and Withers.[4]

2013 Jefferson Market Library, Frederick Clarke Withers designed it when it was to be the Jefferson Market Courthouse

When A. J. Bicknell published Withers' Church Architecture (1873),[5] it was a sign that Withers' reputation was secured. Among his prestigious commissions was the "William Backhouse Astor, Sr. Memorial Altar and Reredos" (1876–77) at Trinity Church. In the 1880s Withers worked in partnership with Walter Dickson (1835-1903), originally from Albany, New York.

Frederick Clarke Withers designed the Jefferson Market Courthouse, now the Jefferson Market Library which was built in 1874 on 10th St. in Greenwich Village, New York next to the Jefferson Market Prison. The Courthouse was made for the Third Judicial District.[7] The Courthouse was designed in the American Gothic, “Venetian” or “Ruskinian” style.[8] The building was called "Jefferson Market" because the site chosen, in 1870 was at the time the Jefferson Market, the local produce market.[9] The frieze on the outside of the building contains scenes from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.[9]

^Withers, Church architecture: plans, elevations, and views of twenty-one churches and two school-houses, photo-lithographed from original drawings, with numerous illustrations shewing details of construction, church fittings... (Bicknell: New York) 1873.